A Calgary woman is going to great lengths to track down the intended recipient of an almost 35-year-old love letter she found on a downtown Calgary road.
Sarah Odd said she was walking to work near the Mustard Seed when she noticed an envelope lying on the street.
“The reason it caught my eye is because it had postage from France. A few steps away was a letter-size piece of paper so I walked over and picked that up as well,” Odd said.
She continued on to work and took a closer look at her finds once she got there.
The top of the letter was dated Jan. 14, 1982.
The first lines of the handwriting read, “I love you, I love you.”
“So obviously, curiosity to whom it belongs to got me as it seemed like a precious item,” Odd said in a Facebook post later that day. That was just the start of her efforts to track down the letter’s owner and intended recipient, Richard Rutherford.
“I googled his named all day on Wednesday. First, it led me to a drilling company here in Calgary so I called them and they said the person of that name has not worked for them in 10 years,” Odd said.
She researched the London, Ontario address but found no one of that name currently living there.
So what’s inside the letter? Odd won’t say, exactly.
“I believe some of its contents are very personal.”
As best she could make out, the letter was sent by a woman named Sabine.
“What I can tell you is that they must have been in their 20s as she mentions him being in university. She tells him she loves him and misses him very much and wishes she was back home with him,” Odd said.
“She was living just outside Paris, from what the address states, maybe living as a nanny as she mentions a little girl. She sent the letter after they had spoken on the phone as she mentions how happy she was to hear his voice and how expensive the phone call was. She mentions his birthday is in March and that her homecoming was to be in June.”
Odd said she did find a Facebook profile for someone by the name of Richard Rutherford who lives in Calgary and is from London. She sent him a message but has not yet heard back.
Odd believes there’s a reason she felt compelled to pick up the letter Wednesday morning and why she has made continued efforts to find its owner.
“It’s 30-plus years old so that means someone, somewhere was holding onto it for that long, for one reason or another.”
“If I lost something like that I would want it back too.”
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